World Bank Pledges $200 Billion Climate Action Investment

The World Bank Group said on Monday that it would double its current five-year investments to US$200 billion in the period 2012 through 2025 to support countries in their climate action plans.

The US$200 billion investment from the World Bank Group in 2021-2025 will consist of some US$100 billion in direct finance from the World Bank and around US$100 billion of combined direct finance from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and private capital mobilized by the World Bank Group.

The investments will support the generation, integration, and infrastructure for 36 GW of renewable energy and will back 1.5 million GWh equivalent of energy savings through efficiency improvement. The institution will also channel efforts to help 100 cities around the world to achieve low-carbon and resilient urban planning and transit-oriented development, and will increase landscape management in up to 50 countries, covering up to 120 million hectares of forests.

“Climate change is an existential threat to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. These new targets demonstrate how seriously we are taking this issue, investing and mobilizing $200 billion over five years to combat climate change,” World Bank Group President, Jim Yong Kim, said.

“People are losing their lives and livelihoods because of the disastrous effects of climate change. We must fight the causes, but also adapt to the consequences that are often most dramatic for the world’s poorest people,” World Bank Chief Executive Officer, Kristalina Georgieva, said.

“There are literally trillions of dollars of opportunities for the private sector to invest in projects that will help save the planet,” IFC CEO Philippe Le Houérou noted.

The World Bank will only make exceptions to consider possible support for financing upstream gas “in the poorest countries where there is a clear benefit in terms of energy access for the poor and the project fits within the countries’ Paris Agreement commitments,” the bank said in December 2017.